Impossible to find first edition hardcover of Gil Scott-Heron’s second novel, written and published when he was 22, titled “The Nigger Factory” based on his experience at Lincoln University, a legacy HBCU (Historically Black Colleges & Universities) college named after Jehudi (Jew) Ashmun (1794-1828), a social reformer from New England who founded Liberia, in West Africa, as a place for refuge of free people of color seeking escape back to Africa. Langston Hughes went to Lincoln, and that was the impetus for Gil applying to and getting into Lincoln. Gil was born into a broken family starting in Chicago with an overwhelmed Mom and an absentee Father. As a youngster he was shipped down to a small Tennessee border town with Mississippi to be raised wonderfully by his maternal Grandmother. She instilled in him his ever seeking quest for knowledge and spunk. As a teen he reunited with Mom in the Bronx and became quite book smart, even going to a private school on full scholarship, a socially activist elitist school, Fieldston. He dropped out of Lincoln because he wanted to engage in social activism through music and writing. His first book, “The Vulture,” a novel about New York City street life largely in Harlem USA printed about 500 in a First Edition and is impossible to find as a First Edition from 1970, when it came out. Gil published this book, “The Nigger Factory” about his complex recollections of student activism at Lincoln, the administration’s reluctance to reform, and the Student Leaders (like him no doubt) who felt squeezed in the middle by the radicalism of violent outside national Student Mobilization groups (think Black Panthers if you will) and an oldster college administration that didn’t want to change with the times. These times were fraught, Vietnam, which was a particularly cruel cauldron for snatching young Black 18 year olds into the draft and becoming cannon fodder in a vicious guerrilla civil war, and civil unrest in Urban America, think riots in Newark, Detroit, Watts, etc. But this novel is so relevant today because Gil Scott-Heron was dismissive about the value of higher education then, saying it’s not the ticket to the American Dream it was (is) hyped to be. This is what American youth now are thinking in a big way. Gil was ahead of the times.
Gil Scott-Heron’s reputation has grown since his death in 2011 at 62. Gil has amazing book smarts and street smarts. He lived on the streets, and unfortunately had a vice of substance abuse addiction most of his life past 20. He wrote amazing rap/nascent hip hop songs about addiction and urban life, all to jazz riffs (he played keyboards/piano). His background was deep reading, Jazz, storytelling and restless street life. Some of his famous songs, which have been sampled, are: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Winter in America, Pieces of a Man, Home is Where the Hatred is, The Bottle, We Almost Lost Detroit, and so many more. His voice was mellifluous, soothing, his smile glorious all the while rapping about hard and political contradictions and tragedies in American life and his own experiences/family.
Posthumously, he is now called the father of rap; the first hip-hopper from the Bronx, well before Grandmaster Flash. Also known as the founder of political rap. Incarcerated for drug and vagrancy charges, Gil’s life spiraled seemingly downwards but in the end towards his death from pneumonia he was making a comeback with a new album featuring the haunting “NY is Killing Me.” Lyrics go: “New York is killing me
Don’t you, don’t you, don’t you
Don’t you know
Killing me
Fast City living ain’t all
It’s cracked up to be
Lord have mercy on me
New York is killing
New York is killing
New York is killing me
This first edition is 242 pages and in very good, not excellent condition. (See detailed pictures). Spine is black with white lettering. Bumping at top and bottom of spine. Pages are clean with no noticeable age toning. No dust cover. Published by the Dial Press in a First Edition, First Printing, 1972. After Gil passed there have been reprinted paperback editions of both The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, by Canongate Books in 2012. But this 1972 original First Edition Hardcover is the real collectible. Maybe 1000 were printed. Maybe 50 to 100 are left. This represents the artistic literary legacy of the captivating and quick witted wonder who was Gil Scott-Heron, arguably the first rap artist and an amazingly soulful protagonist for the down and out and the path to more justice and decency. He communicated musically. Even this book, if you study the non-standard turn of phrases, is music.
